Rocksteady’s Sefton Hill sits down with the guys from GamesTM and discusses boss battles, vehicles and a certain side-kick. “When we started out on Arkham Asylum, our two real touchstones were to make a game that was as authentic as possible, and also a game that was great fun to, and to combine these two things. And out priorities are the same for Arkham City”“Every decision we make here is based around Batman, and what Batman would do in the situation: does the game totally reflect who Batman is? Also, coming in to Arkham City, we wanted to make the same step up that we made with Arkham Asylum. We wanted to challenge ourselves. Internally, we wanted to make that same step up again, and the big thing we wanted improve really was this wish-fulfillment of being Batman on the streets of Gotham. How does it feel to glide through the streets of Gotham, taking on supervillains? That’s the thing that got us excited.”“As a studio we’re not really driven by doing technology for the sake of it. We are a gameplay studio, so our first goal was always to ask how we can release a better Batman game. It’s always about our desire to make a better Batman experience.”Sefton Hill on vehicles“This is a funny one. There aren’t any playable vehicles in the game because what we’ve really focused on is Batman himself. We see him as the ultimate vehicles, if you like. Our drive has been to focus on Batman’s ability to get around. Obviously, you’re now in a much more expansive play area than you were in the first game, so a part of our development has been expanding Batman’s navigational abilities, adding different ways to glide around, new ways to use the grapple-boost from the top of buildings. That’s been a massive part of development, to give wish-fulfillment of feeling what it’s like to be Batman inside the district of Gotham City. Our focus was to expand Batman as a character rather than give you lots of different vehicles to go in.”
Sefton Hill on combat
“We’re not trying to completely revise the system because we had a lot of positive feedback from people who played the first game, and something that we wanted to do was create a system that was easy for people to get into but still had that depth to it. We wanted to expand and build upon that system, and make the second iteration of Freeflow rather than make a complete new combat system. So it will definitely be building on the sold structure that’s already there.”
“We’re adding a whole load of new moves for Batman. We have beatdown, which is the ability to do a quick, focussed attack on an enemy without knocking him down; we have environment counters where you can smash enemies into walls; we have combo counters where enemies can attack multiple times in one movie, multiple enemies can attack at once and you can take them down; you can do aerial attacks where you flip up off enemies into other enemies; you can do projectile counters where you parry thrown objects back at enemies. So we’re really expanding the number of moves that the player can do, but still building on the core system of ‘strike, counter, stun, evade’ that we had in the first game. As well as that, we’re also allowing the player to combo in all their gadgets. Something we didn't do completely in the first game was to totally integrate the different gadgets that you have into the Freeflow system.”
Sefton Hill on factions
“The different criminal factions are really interesting. When all of these people escaped from Arkham Asylum, you would think that it would leave to chaos, but what actually happened was that order formed as the Joker managed to recruit a number of inmates to follow him. It’s the same with Two Face and other characters within Arkham City. So the way it will work primarily is the that all these people will be working to support their own boss and their own criminal supervillain that leads them. But the player’s actions in the main story events will affect that. You’ll definitely see Batman and the player’s actions really affect Arkham City, and the structure and hierarchy of the gangs. That;s something that we though was really important.”
Sefton Hill on side-quests
“One of the key things we wanted to do more of was the idea of taking in optional side-stories as you play through the game. That;s a big new element of Arkham City, that while you do have the main narrative you also have these optional side-quests which feature different villains who have been locked up inside Arkham City. We tell their story, how they got there and how Batman interacts with the. How different people - for example Zsasz - how would he react when locked up here, and how Batman would interact with him? You can jump into those quests if you want to find out more about the world, as well as earn extra XP and upgrade rewards when doing so.”
Sefton Hill on Villains
“We’re really spoilt. We’re the cliched kid in the candy shop because there are so many great villains to choose from. But the story and characters are so important to us, that instead of picking villains we want to put in simply because we like them, we’re asking ourselves what is the best and most interesting story we can tell, and we’re picking villains who can challenge Batman and give the best dramatic beats for that story. It’s a great position to be in because we’ve got such a great Rogues’ Gallery, and that’s why we’re no introducing our own characters. Once we’d got a story and framework in place, we look at which villains can challenge Batman based around that story.”
“We are making the game for Batman fans, but also as a great introduction to Batman for those people who aren’t familiar with every aspect of the universe. We always provide the bios for every character and, when we introduce them, we always make sure that the player understands who they are, what motivates and differentiates them. That’s something that we’re always very mindful of, and we do a lot of testing just in case. We’re not just throwing a lot of faces at the player without them understanding who they are. They motivation behind these characters is so important to is that we’ll always spend a lot of time focusing on those elements. We’re not just trying to squeeze as many characters as we can into the game; we’re picking the ones that will tell the best story. Each of those characters will be there for a reason.”
Sefton Hill on boss battles“Boss battles were interesting in Arkham Asylum. They were started quite late in development, so the first thing we wanted to do for Arkham City was to start them really early in production. Our focus this time is that each of these villains is going to try and challenge Batman in the way that they’re strongest. Batman is a great all-rounder, but these people are going to use what it is that makes them special, and use those abilities to take Batman down. So the main thing in terms of how we’re going to develop these, in terms of production, is that we’re spending a much greater proportion of our time on them. We’ve got some great boss fights lined up and some really surprising ones too.”“Since everyone's inside Arkham City is technically already incarcerated, Batman can’t really arrest people and lock them up. So that creates an interesting dynamic between Batman and the villains. There are some friendly people there that you’ll have to help, such as the triage group that;s in there offering medical support to people, but at the same time there are also people in there who have their own agenda, and there are some fragile alliances that Batman will have to form in order to get through the night and survive. There will be some people in there whose objectives might temporarily line up with those of Batman,, so I think there’s an interesting dynamic there.” 
Above: Possible Models for Robin and Bat Girl
